my name is julia. i'm married to the most wonderful man and we have two children: a boy and a girl. i love being a mother, a wife and a creative person. i knit socks and crochet. i make books, cards and work on mixed media projects - mainly canvas and when the mood strikes me, i art journal or sew.

Feb 27, 2015

i have always liked books - already full or yet to be filled with thoughts and sketches and stories. the first book i "made" was a notebook that i didn't actually make - i altered it although i didn't know it was called that when i did it. i was 15 i think or maybe just 16.

it had a really hideous plastic-foil cover that was grey and had white dots and purple - ahm - little lines or something - on it. anyway it was ugly and gluing nice paper onto the cover didn't work because it was plastic and the glue never really dried at first and when it finally did the paper i had glued on fell off again.

argh

time for drastic measures.

i cut out the block - which included tearing out the book end papers - oh my!

in case you ever wondered: the book end papers are those pages at the very front and back of a hardcover book that are heavier and sturdier than the other pages and seem to be kind of seperate from them. they are what attaches the block (the whole bound stack of paper with printing on it) to the back and front cover of the book. they used to annoy me when i was little - so i took them out and wondered why my book fell apart.

don't do anything to the book end paper of your books - doodling on it is okay ;)

i cut out the block of the book and tore off the part of the book end paper that was glued to the inside of the cover. finally i could get to the edges of the ugly plastic cover and rip it off! i was left with the bare bookboard cover and an intact block. i figured if i just cut some heavy paper to size i could reattach the block by gluing one half of my new end paper to the cover inside and the other half to the first page of the block. i covered the bookboard with some fabric that i had marbled and glued in some new end paper. it worked. it didn't look very neat and one could definitely tell the book had been meddled with but it worked as a book again.

it's still far from full but at that time i took that book everywhere, writing short scenes, stories, thoughts, obervations, ... i doodled and drew in it and i used it from both sides. that was the beginning of my love for making books.

(i don't count the time when i was 7 and had made lots of mini books from folded sheets of paper i had taped together and drew and wrote picture stories of the easter bunny that i then "sold" to our neighbours.)

around that time - when i was 17 i think - my sister had just started studying at the university of applied arts in vienna. she came home one day and showed me a booklet she had made in an optional course she had signed up for. it was a book-art course. years back you could get a degree in book-art at that university but it was reduced from a degree course to an optional. lots of students take it. it comes in handy to be able to bind your own assignments and exhibition programms when you are studying at an art university. makes it all that more artsy...

my sister told me about that class and i was totally beside myself with excitement and made her promise to take notes of every single step when she went to the next class. and she did. i actually made a book following her notes and sketches - but i didn't take any pictures of it and i could bite my butt i didn't because i don't have it anymore...

a little later i asked my sister if i could come to university with her and see the bookbinding workshop. she said we could even work there if i wanted to - students could borrow the keys to various workshops of the university - they just had to be signed up for one of the classes that were held there. i think i almost hugged her to death.

we went to buy paper - big sheets of paper - and bookboard. i loved the workshop with it's huge windows and lots of light, the long wooden work benches - all furrowed from the cutting and poking with sharp and pointy tools, the machines and paper presses. oh, and the paper guillotine - it was enormous - at least as far as i was concerned but i'm sure there are bigger ones. i was glad it was an electric one and that we would have needed a key for it, which we didn't have. students are only allowed to use it when the teacher is present. we met her on the second day when we came back to take our blocks and covers out of the presses. she peeked over my shoulder to look at my work saying i did a good job. i think i floated a couple of inches above my chair with pride...

(later i watched her working for a while: she glued the spine of a huge ledger that held all the speeches of our former federal president and when that was left to dry she went on to prepare the cover which was bound in red goats leather - it was rather mind-boggling.)

she let us use the paper guillotine and now i have one handmade book with a perfectly cut block. it was quite impressive seeing that angled blade go down at a push of a button. it is over one meter long and i took an extra step back just to be sure. (my only comfort was that if you did get your fingers in there at least it would be a clean cut and fairly quick...)

the book is rather tattered already. there's still plenty of room in there but i use it frequently to make sketches of projekts i don't want to forget about - mostly sewing-projects. after that i tried various different techniques of bookbinding, some more professional that others.

i made ten A5-sized (ca. 8,5" x 5,5") books for a friend who had ordered them to give as gifts using the coptic stitch binding. (i'll ask her if she still has one so i can take a picture - i never used to take pictures of anything.) they turned out really nice - she had painted the paper i used for the front cover herself.

in autumn 2012 i was in desperate need of distraction and dove into the making of lots of stuff for a christmas market.

among all that stuff were these:

they are leporello-books. leporello is a character in mozart's opera "Don Giovanni" who keeps a list of all the girls his master has seduced. this list is accordion fold for the dramatic effect it provides when it is being pulled out and folded open. that's why accordion fold is also called leporello fold, which i think is nicer.

i had originally made them to be used as funky notebooks even though i learned how to make them as photo album/mini album. i feel like hereabouts people don't really get the purpose of a mini album or scrapbook or smashbook. and those who actually make/use them don't know what it's called - at least that's my experience with people i know and met at that market. they all needed an explanation on how to use these books and what they were for. and i knew it would be like that beforehand anyway - so i just made them as notebooks with boring writing paper in them. maybe that was a mistake because i didn't sell many of them.

three to be precise...

now i'm taking them apart as far as it's possible without destroying the basic structure to turn them into junk journals, photo albums, sketchbooks, ... whatever the potential owner wants it to be really...i'm taking out the signatures of boring writing paper and ripping out the pockets i don't like any more.

i replace them with signatures of pattern paper, solid coloured paper, vellum, transparencies, envelopes, ticket strips, book pages and whatever else i find and can think of.

doily, tag, on-the-edge-die-cut vellum, paper

paper, bookpaper tag, on-the-edge-die-cut transparency, envelope

my daughter assisted me with turning the pages here...

tags, vellum, little file folders

ticket strip, vellum tags, bookpaper file folder

little file folders, vellum envelope with bookpaper in it

facsimile torn from an old book on literature (the original must have been gorgeously coloured)

i make new pockets or envelopes to cover up any traces of destruction:

if i feel like it i use sprays, inks and stamps on the papers.

stencil and distress ink on the white back of pattern paper

stamping on a stiched-in ticket strip - these can be and are supposed to be torn out and added to other pages

splattering ink all over solid cardstock

i came up with a tiny collection folio - tim holtz style - to put in the very back of the book.

it holds little file tabs for the owner to put whereever needed and desired - matching the rest of the book of course.

(i painted the inside of this one with golden ink - in the picture it looks blotchy but in real life it has nice coverage and great shimmer.)

this one is actually stiched into a signature and has the Tim Holtz - Collection Folio-style cascading spine which the owner is free to either use as intended, use somewhere else in the book or discard...

the envelopes and pockets will be filled with matching tags and ephemera to write on or for pictures.

transparent envelope with pattern paper card

vellum envelope with torn bookpaper cards

i don't know yet what i'll do with all of them when they are done. with each one that i'm working on i feel like: "i wanna keep you for myself!", but i can't keep them all... and in the end i don't use them because i don't want to spoil them...

Feb 22, 2015

i started knitting socks on october 2nd 2010 around lunchtime. i know that because that's when i went into labour on the day my son was born - which was later that afternoon.

i had been wanting to start knitting socks for quite a while and waiting for my baby to be born seemed to be a good time to do it. (it was too early to go to the hospital and i desperately needed something to keep my hands busy.)

so i grabbed an old tangled ball of yarn i had in my stash - i wasn't even sure if it was actual sock-yarn and there was only about a third of the ball left - and a set of knitting-needles.

i made the cuff of the green sock before we headed to the hospital and finished it when we came back - now three of us - and my new baby was sleeping.

the other sock i made from an equally old and tangled scrap of yarn that was the same kind as the green one. i had to use some black yarn to finish them and when i had finished they turned out to be too big and loose and didn't fit at all. i was rather frustrated until it turned out i had cast on too many stiches and used needles that where a size to big for the yarn - since they were scraps i didn't have the paper label any more and had to guess. i went to the yarnshop that was just across the street from where we lived then and bought leather soles to stitch onto the socks and turn them into house shoes. i still wear them at home...

this is the 2nd pair of socks i made. i went back to the yarnshop and asked the lady for some nice sockyarn and what size of needles she recommended. this yarn is "Regia Colormania fiesta color (4066)" - it is a 6-ply and i think i used 3mm or 3,5mm needles. they worked a lot better and fit better too but since i had no experience with the length of the foot and when to start decreasing for the toes they turned out a tiny bit too long for me and i gave them to my mother. they fit her perfectly, she loved them and was very honored to be given my first "real" pair of socks. =)

my 3 rd pair of socks was another pair of house-shoe-socks with leather soles for my dad. he liked the first ones a lot but they were too small for him. so i bought two balls of "Regia irland petrol color 05859" and made him a christmas present.

this was the first pair of socks that i kept for myself and that actually fit. i bought the yarn in a value-pack of three 100g-balls - one solid brown color i didn't much care for (who wants brown socks? i guess people who wear brown suits - and they probably wouldn't wear hand-knits...), one ball of a red and black ply i haven't touched since i put it in my yarn box. and this lovely self-striping. i think the pack was called "Herbst" (autumn) and i think it's out of production. the brand name is "Freizeit" and they have lots of very nice colours to choose from.

after that i went totally crazy with the sockyarn. my husband asked everyone who wanted to give me something for my next birthday to donate whatever they wished so i could buy yarn to my heart's content. i think that was in 2012...

this is one of them: "Opal - Lasst Blumen Sprechen" (say it with flowers). it's hand-dyed and there were six colourways (in better picture-quality than mine =):

i don't know if they are still available. i got the top right one which is "roses", the middle left one which is "dahlias" and the middle right one called "tulips".

i gave the tulip-socks to my mother for her birthday and kept the dahlia-socks for myself.

this yarn doesn't just stripe while knitting - it spirals!

i even used the paper label from the tulip-yarn to make a giftcard for my sister for christmas that year: i would knit a pair of socks for her from any kind of yarn she chose. she chose this one:

this was a "Zauberball Fuchsienbeet" by Schoppel Wolle. i absolutely love zauberbälle! i have five or six more still to knit lovely stuff with in my yarnbox and two more on my wishlist. =)

remember the brown ball of yarn i mentioned before? well, who wants brown socks, right? brown is awesome when combined with other colours, especially teal, petrol, turquoise and blues. the legs of these socks were just rectangles stitched together and the foot got knitted right onto that. i had initially made these for myself but they turned out too short. so i gave them to my sister for whom i had made similar socks a while back in red with a leg made out of beige and red speckled yarn. i think she wore those to death anyway so the new ones arrived just in time.

half of these socks is also made from that brown yarn. the other half from some cheap sockyarn i picked up at a discounter when they had a special. i liked the colour even though it's not as soft as brandname yarn usually is and it split while knitting which made the process a little slower that usual.

this is the latest addition to my sock-family. i got this yarn for christmas 2013. it's ATELIER ZITRON Trekking XXL Color Duett. it's absolutely stunning! it's not so much a color duet as a symphony... it's soft and easy to knit and i had a really hard time putting it out of my hands.

i finished this pair within four days. with most of the others it took waaay looonger and usually one sock was done while yarn and needles were patiently waiting to be picked up again for the second one or i had started the second sock and worked my way up to the heel just to get annoyed and put it in my basket for the next six months... although i don't have this problem so much any more. since i knit mostly with yarn that slowly changes colour i have to keep working on it to see the change - it's odd but i can't seem to stop until i reach the colour that's peeking out from under several layers of wound-up softness and when i reach it there's already the next promising shade coming through and it goes on and on...

Feb 08, 2015

i'm starting to feel a little better - just in time for my husband to catch the germs. my son has temporarily "moved" to my mum's, a kind offer of hers so we can get well again and don't have to be up and about so much keeping two kids happy and entertained. i really hope the little ones don't catch it.

but i actually wanted to talk about beautiful things:

i came across this page today and thought these truly vintage pages were just beautiful. some may be a little plain while others are little works of art. apparently even in the 19th century there was already some sort of "scrapbooking industry".

i'm not a scarpbooker myself, but i like to collect ephemera and scraps of pretty papers and packaging. i use them in collages, mixed media projects and books and albums that i make for others to use. (somehow i hardly ever manage to use my own handmade books.)

then i read about the tradition of valentine's cards and found this

and thought: "they don't make them like this any more." this card was made by Esther Howland around 1870. she is considered to be "the mother of the american valentine". if you click on the link and then the image of the card in the article, you can zoom in and see the incredible detail of the paper lace used. i'd love to know how that was made back then...

Feb 07, 2015

i really wanted to share some photos of our wintervacation - all the snowy trees and mountains, the kids on the sledge, frozen riverbanks, etc. - but i'm ill. i caught that disgusting flu that is running rampage hereabouts - everyone seems to have it. (last week 28! of my husband's colleagues were off sick - he's a teacher at the local highschool.) my mum had it, my sister had it, a guy on our vacation had it - you get the picture...

anyway, a terrible headache keeps me away from the screen unless i have to click on "next cd" on my audiobook. besides that i'm sleeping or gazing into space, waiting for my temperature to drop and feeling guilty for not doing anything while my wonderful husband is cooking and taking care of the kids. according to my mum that's all i'm gonna be doing for a good part of the next week - i hope not.

i had the window open for a while just before. it's a lovely sunny day and the air is very mild. it smelled of spring. i can't wait for spring to arrive and all my flowers to sprout...